Modern society, in the past one to two decades, has become subject to antisocietal activities of groups such as terrorist organizations, freedom fighters, individuals of radical persuasion, and individuals holding to anarchist or nihilistic philosophies. Such groups and individuals consider several potential means for physically attacking the fundamental structures of civilized societies. These include deployment and use of weapons of mass destruction, among which are nuclear devices.
Nuclear devices include those which upon triggering produce a fissioning nuclear explosion or a fusion thermonuclear explosion, and a so-called “dirty bomb”. In a dirty bomb, an explosion is triggered with the objective of dispersing various toxic or radiologically hazardous radionuclides into an environment with the intent of causing radioactive contamination in a wide physical area. Although only a few selected radionuclides are of use in preparing a fission bomb and in providing the trigger for a fusion bomb, a wide range of radionuclides may potentially be included in a dirty bomb. Radionuclides that are candidates for use in antisocietal devices such as fission bombs, thermonuclear bombs and dirty bombs are termed “threatening” herein. It is believed that the choice of threatening components includes radionuclides with long half-lives for radioactive decay, as well as radionuclides such as those used in medical diagnostics and various research endeavors, which generally have short half-lives. It is important in screening operations to have the capability of detecting and identifying any of the radionuclides potentially usable in a nuclear device.
Since nuclear devices such as those described above may be assembled or deployed at any location within the geographical boundaries of a nation, it would be advantageous for governmental authorities to have the capability of screening for component radionuclides at widely dispersed locations. Common nonlimiting examples of such locations include automotive highways, airports, train stations, municipal mass transit systems, governmental buildings and freight handling facilities. Beneficially the screening installations would be automated and able to operate free of human intervention as long as no radionuclides are detected, but to alert appropriate authorities when a positive detection and/or identification of a specific radionuclide deemed to be a threat is made.
In summary there remains a need for a system and methods to detect and/or identify any of a wide range of radionuclides. There is further a need for such systems and methods to operate rapidly, automatically and independently of human intervention. There remains a need for detection and/or identification systems and methods capable of operating at high volume, and with high throughput. There furthermore remains a need for a system and methods to detect and identify a particular radionuclide from among a set of candidate radionuclides that an antisocietal group or individual might deploy. The present invention addresses these outstanding needs.